Nordic teenagers can enjoy a drink without being considered antisocial, like these on a beach in Sweden. Photograph: Ghislain and Marie David De Lossy/Getty Images

In May Norwegian school leavers will take part in a tradition that would get the Daily Mail fulminating. While students in the rest of Europe prepare for their final exams, Norwegian 18 and 19-year-olds spend their final school weeks partying, drinking rivers of beer, and cruising around town in custom-made buses they have spent days and nights decorating themselves. The celebrations culminate on the night of 17 May - Norway's national day - when students from the whole country gather for a giant outdoor party in the forest surrounding Oslo. The next day cleaning vehicles spend hours collecting the condoms and beer cans left behind, while the students finally sit down with their books to revise.

But unlike in Britain, where many would howl in protest at such "antisocial" behaviour, Norwegian adults look on the russ, as it is called, as a benign rite-of-passage. The police keep a light touch while the rest of the public looks fondly on, reminiscing about the times they enjoyed themselves during their own russ days.

The tradition is an example of what makes Norway and the other Nordic countries a place where young people are better considered than in the UK. In 2007 a Unicef report on the wellbeing of children and adolescents in 21 industrialised countries, put the Nordic countries at the top of the table together with the Netherlands, while the UK was at the bottom. The Nordic countries scored top marks for having little child poverty (less than 5% of children are poor), more 15 to 19-year-olds in education or employment than anybody else, and children and adolescents feeling happier than their equivalents in other countries.

"Generally Scandinavian children [and teenagers] have good lives," says Charlotte Guldberg, the chairwoman of Denmark's National Council for Children. "They live in societies where there is little violence, they go to good schools, there are good social and health provision in place."

And in many ways young people in Scandinavia are taken seriously by society. 7% of MPs are below the age of 30 in Denmark, including Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, who was elected to Parliament when she was 23 and lists her job title as "student". In Sweden, both prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and the leader of the opposition, Mona Sahlin, were first elected when they were 25. And today in Norway, Anna-Kristin Ljunggren MP was elected to Parliament at the tender age of 21, in 2005. She had then already served in the city council of her hometown of Narvik for a few years. "In Norway it's not unusual to have young people elected to parliament," she says.

Ljunggren became involved in politics when the city council wanted to save money by cutting the funding of a culture centre popular with young people, as well as several popular youth clubs. After lobbying the local politicians and organising a demo, the council reconsidered its decision, and Ljunggren was invited to join the Labour party, which has run the town for more than a hundred years. As an MP, she is interested in education policy, the gender pay gap and international development. "I would really like to go to university but I haven't had the time yet," she says.

Aside from accepting young politicians, issues affecting teenagers and young people are often considered in public debate in Scandinavia. If school reforms are being debated, the media will go to schools to ask what students think of them; if TV public debates focus on bullying or family life, the panel will include one or more teenagers.

But not all is picture perfect up north. Two years ago Copenhagen was the site of violent riots pitting young people against police armed with tear gas and water cannons, when a popular cultural centre was demolished by the authorities. The event shocked Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia to the core as violent protests are rare in these countries, which have a long tradition of building political consensus. "It was like a civil war," Guldberg says. "We were not listening to what young people were saying and did not recognise how important youth culture was to them."

While Guldberg reckons Scandinavian teenagers have good lives, she points out that the 1,100-odd children and teenagers who are part of the panel that advise her office overwhelmingly say they often feel neglected and not listened to by their parents. "They want their parents to spend more attention [on] them," Guldberg says. "But their parents' lives are so busy because of work pressure. The working family is under pressure and more should be done to create a better work-life balance." Words that are familiar to British parents and teenagers.

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